Former
Oyo State Governor and leader, Action Congress of Nigeria in Oyo State,
Chief Lamidi Adesina, on Wednesday said the inability of the Federal
Government to expose the killers of the late Chief Bola Ige, 10 years
after, should not be surprising because the Federal Government knew
about the murder.
Adesina,
who said this at a public lecture held in honour of Ige at the Premier
Hotel, Ibadan, as part of activities marking the 10th year remembrance
of Ige’s assassination, predicted that the killers would be exposed.
He also predicted that the progressives would one day take over the mantle of leadership in the country.
Ige,
a former Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of the Federation and
former governor of the old Oyo State, was murdered in his Bodija,
Ibadan home on December 23, 2001 while serving as justice minister.
Adesina
recounted the circumstances of the late politician’s death. He said as
the governor of the state when Ige was murdered, he was shocked to the
marrow on the night of the incident, because he harped on the need for
the security agents to be alive to their responsibility at the carol
service organised by the state government barely four hours earlier.
He
said the former President Olusegun Obasanjo under whom the late Ige was
serving made a call to him on that particular night asking, “Is he
(Ige) certified dead?”
Adesina
said, “Not until the humpty dumpty called the PDP is dislodged from the
centre, the killers of Bola Ige “will not be known.”
The
former governor, who ruled Oyo State between 1999 and 2003, maintained
that the ruling PDP ensured his exit from the Agodi Government House in
2003 because of his commitment to pursue the murder case to a logical
conclusion.
He said, “A person can be killed, the idea cannot be killed.
“I
may not know the murderer of Bola Ige, but, I know that one day God
will reveal the killers and judge them accordingly. With the experience
of our late leader, we have resolved that no member of our party from
the South-West should accept to serve any government at the centre
unless our party is at the centre.”
He urged the people not to be dismayed by the failure to arrest Ige’s killer but to press on until the killer was exposed.
Adesina,
who said the dream of unravelling the killer might not come to fruition
soon, said, “The people should not give up the fight even if I am not
alive at the time. The killer of Ige must be exposed.”
Also,
Governor Rauf Aregbesola of Osun State said the people should not be
sad about Ige’s death because he died as a great personality who stood
for the truth. Aregbesola, while delivering the lecture titled,
‘Political violence and assassinations: implications for the future of
democracy,’ said, “It does not matter how a man died but how he lived.”
He
added, “I salute the spirit of Uncle Bola because he never betrayed
cowardice because in the room where he died, he died as a courageous
man. I want you to know that thought Martin Luther King died at age 39,
it will take President Barrack Obama of America a lot to meet King’s
record.”
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